Thursday, September 09, 2010

James Franco isn't a gay/stoner (just a masturbator)

"You asked! So, when I’m alone, I do masturbate a lot. I don’t know why. It’s like you have those days where it’s just like, I have a ton of writing to do, or a ton of reading to do, and you’re just like, OK, I’m going to be on the couch all day or in bed all day just doing that… I tend to have a four- or five-time day". -James FrancoSource: riskybusiness.hollywoodreporter.com

"The idea of sex -- and his lack of outlets for it -- excites, terrifies, and frustrates Donnie. In one hypnosis session with his therapist, Dr. Thurman (Katherine Ross), he announces that he's met a girl, and when she asks him if he still thinks about sex a lot, he answers in the affirmative and says he thinks about that and "Married ... with Children." That is, he turns down the sound and fantasizes about having sex with Christina Applegate. When Dr. Thurman inquires about his family, his mind refuses to stray from that one track; he slips his hand down his pants, beginning to masturbate, and smiles: "I don't think about f***king my family. That's gross." Source: rogerebert.suntimes.com

Scan of James Franco and Jake Gyllenhaal from InStyle magazineScan of "Brokeback Mountain" with Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger in The Advocate"Franco is heterosexual (unless everyone who knows him well—including his girlfriend of five years—is lying or has been monumentally duped), yet he is routinely “inspired” to direct or play gay.James Franco as Scott Smith in "Milk (2008)

In addition to the two gay-themed poems he adapted for student films (Frank Bidart’s “Herbert White” being the other), Franco portrayed a 17-year-old swimmer dating an older man in the gay indie film Blind Spot and Harvey Milk’s lover in Milk. He also French-kissed Will Forte on Saturday Night Live, took a queer studies course at NYU, and created performance art pieces about gender and sexual confusion. And then there’s Franco’s first solo art show this past summer in New York City; it featured video monologues with lines like “We’re all gender-fucked—we’re all something in between, floating like angels.”

“If you were gay or bisexual, would you tell me?” I ask him. “Are we at a point where someone like yourself could matter-of-factly come out without the world stopping for a day or two?”

127 Hours, directed by Danny Boyle and starring James Franco, is a film based on the story of Aron Ralston, the mountain climber who amputated his own arm to free himself after being trapped by a boulder for nearly five days.

Still of James Franco in General Hospital tv series

He smiles and glances out the window. One of the college students shuffles closer. “Sure, I’d tell you if I was”, he says. “I guess the reason I wouldn’t is because I’d be worried that it would hurt my career. I suppose that’s the reason one wouldn’t do that, right? But no, that wouldn’t be something that would deter me. I’m going to do projects that I want to do. Everyone thinks I’m a stoner, and some people think I’m gay because I’ve played these gay roles. That’s what people think, but it’s not true. I don’t smoke pot. I’m not gay. But on another level, there’s something in me that is able to play roles like that in a way that’s convincing.”Franco finished at UCLA and then enrolled in four graduate programs—two for fiction, one for poetry, and one for film. “I think all of his friends asked him, ‘Why are you doing this, you crazy person?’ ” girlfriend O’Reilly says. “One graduate program is hard enough, and he’s going to do four? But ever since he’s gone back to school, I’ve seen a transformation in him. He’s just happier. He can’t get enough of it.”James Franco and his girlfriend Ahna O'Reilly attending "Pineapple Express" premiere

As serious as Franco takes his writing—and his life—O’Reilly says he’s also “the goofiest” person she knows. “Prior to these last couple of years, I think people only saw James as this brooding James Dean kind of guy,” she says. “Then people saw him in Pineapple Express”—where Franco plays a lovable, Guatemalan pants–wearing weed dealer—“and realized what all of his friends have always known. James is both the most serious and the goofiest guy around. In some ways he’s not that far off from the role he played in Pineapple Express.”James Franco at Sundance Film Festival 2010 Portrait

Minus the weed, of course. Unlike Ginsberg, who took LSD for the first time in 1959 in Franco’s hometown of Palo Alto, Franco doesn’t drink or do drugs. When I e-mail him weeks after our meeting to ask why, his reply is short and sweet. “No time, really.” Source: www.advocate.com